Top 3 Sustainable Seafood Apps

On a recent jaunt to Whole Foods I was delighted to see the company’s seafood was all labeled as either “best choice” “good alternative” or “avoid.” I’d never seen a seafood counter offer sustainability rankings let alone a system that put bright green (“best choice”) yellow (“good alternative”) and red (“avoid”) stickers next to the price.

It’s a project the company started in conjunction with the Blue Ocean Institute and though Whole Foods phased out swordfish and tuna from red-rated fisheries earlier this year, the company won’t phase out all red-rated fisheries until 2013. Still it’s a great start.

Overfishing has become a major concern in recent decades with some organizations like Oceana estimating that 80% of the world’s oceans are over-exploited. When demand outpaces a fish’s ability to reproduce, fish populations decline without the ability to bounce back.

Another contribution to overfishing is bycatch—marine animals that are caught unintentionally in nets and bottom trawls.

The good news is that eating seafood can be sustainable and these three apps will help you figure out which types of seafood are ok to purchase or order when you’re dining out.

1) Seafood Watch

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’sSeafood Watch app is the best on the market. It uses your phone’s GPS to load the right regional guide for your location and even has a new feature called Project FishMap where you can find restaurants serving sustainable seafood in your area. The app includes a sushi guide, which lists fish names in Japanese and English and if you ever find seafood on the “avoid” list, the app will offer suggestions for sustainable alternatives. There’s a glossary to explain fishing terms like gillnetting, pelagic trawling and hydraulic dredging and all seafood is color-coded as “best choice” (green), “good alternative” (yellow) or “avoid” (red).

(Price: Free)

2) FishPhone

Brought to you by the organization that provides ratings for Whole Foods, the Blue Ocean Institute’s FishPhone app is top-notch. Like Seafood Watch, the guide includes a ranking system and suggestions on alternatives to over-fished species. Unlike Seafood Watch, this guide offers five categories instead of three: “relatively abundant” (green), “somewhat abundant” (light green), “somewhat problematic” (yellow), “low abundance” (orange) and “problematic” (red). It also offers recipes and wine pairings to complement select seafood. The guide doesn’t provide regional information about fish you’re likely to find in your local market or which restaurants have sustainable options. But overall it’s a great app with a sweet price tag.

(Price: Free)

3) Safe Seafood

Safe Seafood provides rankings—“enjoy!” (green), “eat in moderation” (orange) and “avoid" (red)—for over 100 different types of seafood. Each species includes a photo, description and even a link to Wikipedia with more information about that type of seafood. It’s pretty minimalist without a glossary of terms, any GPS functionality or recipes and wine pairings. But as a quick, easy-to-use guide it definitely gets the job done. The app costs $.99 and the developers donate 10% of all proceeds to the Environmental Defense Fund.

(Price: $.99)

If you want to learn more about sustainable seafood I recommend checking out the benefits and drawbacks of farmed fish as well as the common practice of mislabeled seafood. It's also good to know about shark finning.